Human Resources Strategy(Career Development and Autonomous Work Styles)

Our Policy and Approach

Human Resources Strategy

Our business environment is changing rapidly. To respond flexibly to these changes, it will be critical for diverse human resources to demonstrate their abilities fully.
At the same time, it is essential to strengthen our organizational capabilities so that we can leverage individuals with extensive expertise and continue adapting to changes in the future.
Enhancing talent and organizational capabilities will bring about innovations, which in turn will offer new value to our customers and society.
We expect this will contribute to increasing the NTT Group's corporate value. Furthermore, we aim to create a virtuous cycle where employees work feeling excited about such outcomes, which lead to greater engagement.
Based on this view, we implemented various transformations in fiscal 2023.
At their core is autonomous career formation (career ownership). Through this scheme, employees will be able to grow their skills and strengths and choose organizations and jobs where they can make use of those abilities.
Moreover, it is crucial to create a more enabling work environment for such motivated employees. Through these continuous transformations, we will work to attain employees' self-realization and the Group's business growth.

Autonomous Work Styles

We believe that creating a safe and secure workplace, developing employment conditions, and respecting a variety of work styles that suit life events means a workplace where employees can work energetically in good health, both physically and mentally, can be created, and so we are implementing initiatives to achieve this.
By promoting diverse work styles with the use of remote work and the "super flex-time system," we will not only increase productivity and efficiency, but also enable employees to make more effective use of their time, resulting in a better work-life balance.
Moreover, to maximize well-being for all, we strive to provide even better employment conditions with fair evaluation, opportunities for growth and offer multiple work style and career development options to each employee.

Promotion of a Distributed Society Based on Remote Work

The NTT Group recognizes that remote work will play a key role in society even after COVID-19 subsides. Based on this recognition, we will make active efforts as an ICT company to improve DX and other environments that allow for more opportunities for remote work. We believe these initiatives ensure the Group's sustainable growth, enhance its corporate value, and eventually help find solutions to social issues.

From this perspective, we are currently promoting various specific initiatives, such as (1) environmental improvements through cloud-based and zero-trust systems, (2) DX promotion such as automation and streamlining to enable remote work, and (3) revision of systems to promote a work style based on remote work. Remote work systems and allowances have been established to increase the flexibility of employees' working hours and work locations to specifically promote a work style based on remote work.

Instead of promoting a traditional "work-life balance" that separates work from other aspects of life, we plan going forward to promote "Work-in-Life," in which employee views work as an integral part of their individual lives, and have the freedom to choose and design their own work styles. To achieve this, it is important to increase flexibility in not only working hours and work locations, but also location of residence. We are therefore revising our remote work system to newly enable employees to have a work style based on remote work.

Encouraging Independent and Personal Skill Development

Retaining a diverse array of human resources serves as a powerful management foundation for any organization.

This requires the development of employment conditions, such as fair evaluation, equal opportunity, opportunities for growth and benefit programs.

We are also currently constructing a personnel database for registering past career experience and expert knowledge of employees engaged in our international businesses to accelerate the pace of visualizing and nurturing global human resources toward ensuring an optimal allocation of personnel.

Targets and Performance

(Common to 15-18) Employee Engagement rate
Performance in fiscal 2023: 54% (approx. 100 domestic Group companies)
Target for fiscal 2024: improvement (compared to 57% in fiscal 2022) (approx. 100 domestic Group companies)

Main Initiatives

Employee Engagement Survey

The NTT Group has been conducting engagement surveys since fiscal 2021.

Four KPIs have been set to measure employee engagement at the NTT Group.

We introduced Qualtrics, our Group-wide system experience management platform, at approximately 100 domestic Group companies. This enables us to measure engagement and identify areas that need to be improved.

Engagement is analyzed with an eye to improvement, and action is taken to increase it. We expect that this will lead to a greater number of employees who resonate with their company's and organization's policies and strategies, take pride in their work, and work proactively.

To improve employee engagement as a company, we have made it a metric for executive compensation, as well as an assessment item for performance bonuses for all managers. We will strive to increase employee engagement as a company and as an organization.

NTT Group's Four KPIs

--The willingness to make voluntary contributions--
①I am motivated to contribute more than is required to get the job done at the company

--Attachment to and pride in the company--
②I am proud to work at this company
③I would recommend our company as a great place towork to those I know

--Job satisfaction--
④I gain a sense of personal accomplishment through my work

Specific Initiatives

We have conducted correlation analyses with engagement (four KPIs) and have identified the elements that have an impact, and we prioritize our strategies accordingly.

Maintenance Area Initiatives

"Safety," "respect," and "trust in superiors" were highly correlated with engagement and received high positive ratings.

At NTT, we have been promoting diverse work styles unrestricted by time, place, or location of residence.

To this end, we have striven to deal hold one-on-one meetings with employees, and believe that efforts to improve trust in superiors, respect for individuals, and safety are bearing fruit.

Areas Needing Improvement Initiatives

The items with a strong correlation to engagement but lower positive evaluations were "Opportunities for growth (ability to achieve career goals)" and "Strategy penetration (having confidence in the future of the company)/change management (receiving support for organizational changes)."

These have been ongoing issues since the previous fiscal year.

To support growth, in April 2023, we revised the system to allow for salary hikes and promotions depending on the acquisition and demonstration of expertise. We have also enriched the career consulting function, which allows employees across the Group to discuss their career plans.

Additionally, we have established the NTT Group Job Board as a framework for supporting those who want to try to transfer jobs through public recruitment.

This has made it possible for each employee to take ownership of their careers and act accordingly.

The system has already been established, and we are currently introducing role models and offering operational support for using the system.

For strategy penetration/change management, we are broadening the scope of management outreach.

We are also holding discussions regarding survey results within each company and organization, consistently deliberating over organizational-specific issues.

We also implement initiatives that get leaders at each level to commit to their respective actions.

Implementation of Remote Work System, Super Flextime System, and Remote Standard

The global environment underwent unprecedented change as COVID-19 infections continued to spread, and our work styles also changed accordingly.

Until that point there was a limit to the number of times employees could use the work from home system, but the NTT Group introduced a remote work system and lifted restrictions on how many times it can be used.

The introduction of a super flex-time system also allowed for flexible work styles that are no longer constrained by location or time.

Implementing various changes like these not only increases productivity and efficiency, but also allowed employees to make more effective use of their time than before, and resulting in a better balance between work and life.

We introduced the "Remote Standard" system from July 2022 to implement a work style that is not restricted by one's place of residence.

Through this initiative, we aim to eliminate work styles that require relocation or solo transfer assignments.

Remote Standard

Promoting Work-Life Management Work and Leave Style Reforms

The NTT Group seeks to create new value through innovation. In order to accomplish this goal, there is a strong need for all NTT Group employees to break away from traditional work styles to adopt more efficient practices not bound by time and place, and thereby exercise greater levels of independence and creativity.

We are also aware of the great importance of supporting this shift by cultivating a deeper understanding of work-life management throughout workplaces and fostering a corporate culture that accepts the diverse work styles of each individual employee.

A variety of systems to promote work-life management

Leave systems

Childbirth and childcare support

Nursing care support

Work-related systems

Helping Employees Develop their Abilities

In addition to Group training and on-the-job training to enable employees to gain necessary skills in various fields of business, we provide many other opportunities for employees who are eager to get ahead, including e-learning, distance learning, in-house certification of skill levels, and support for external qualifications.

We have also introduced a Group-wide talent management system to create an environment that enables employees to play a more active role in developing their careers, and we recommend training courses that would be effective in achieving their career goals.

Status of human resource development: Education (per employee)

We actively support employee career development in various ways, including having superiors hold personal talks with their subordinates at the start, the middle and the end of the fiscal year to review performance and career plans, and holding management training for employees tapped for promotion.

In particular, we have created a curriculum for nurturing experts in the security field given the heightening security risks of recent years, and we offer leadership development and a personal network building training curriculums to around 400 carefully selected general managers and section managers.

With an eye on the further globalization of our operations, and to nurture personnel capable of performing in global markets, we also send employees to study at overseas graduate schools or participate in our overseas work experience programs.

NTT University

Amid the ever-changing business environment, we operate NTT University as an initiative for fostering a diverse range of management personnel who possess broad perspectives and experience and are filled with the ambition to lead the world. In addition to the Next Executive Course (NEX) aimed at those striving to be promoted to executive officers within five years, in July 2023, we launched the Future Executive Course (FEX) aimed at potential future executives.
Applying meritocratic principles, we select personnel regardless of their years of service or age who are committed to becoming executives, and we support their growth as management-level personnel. Centered around difficult assignments that entail solving critical and challenging management issues, NTT University also provides a mentoring program that offers opportunities for learning and insights through dialogue with current executives, as well as external conferences, seminars, training, and other selective support programs.

CX Transformation Personnel Training Program

The NTT Group has positioned customer experience (CX)-related business as a potential growth area, and aims to intensify the training of personnel who can thoroughly understand issues from a user-centric perspective, and plan and implement CS solutions that create new brand experiences. To this end, we are implementing a personnel training program to promote CX business across the NTT Group.

This program focuses on the acquisition and enhancement of skills essential for CX business, including consulting skills such as listening, problem-solving, and hypothesis design, as well as user research skills, customer-centric CX service creation skills, and communication and execution skills for agile environments.

Performance in fiscal 2023: 39 employees at 13 companies (satisfaction 87%, willingness to apply skills 100%, recommendation rate 62%)

Fair Evaluation and Compensation

In our employee qualification system, the NTT Group puts priority on performance and sets behavior and performance targets tailored to each qualification rank. By steadily and accurately carrying out a series of evaluation processes that feedback evaluations based on these targets, our personnel system promotes autonomous and independent work by employees

Rather than having each company operate its own mechanisms for human resources management and development, we operate an all-inclusive system for managing employees' placement, building skills, evaluation, rating and payment, centered on an employee qualification system that indicates our expectations in terms of behavior and performance according to the employee level. (Evaluation system applies to 60% of the NTT Group.)

To ensure that each business is developed smoothly, it is important to place the right personnel in the right places so that every employee can display their fullest potential.

Therefore, we periodically rotate personnel on the basis of each employee's overall skill development and career plan decisions.

Goal Management

Based on the organization's business plans and other guidelines, the NTT Group sets appropriate behaviors and performance levels for each qualification rank, and establishes goals for the year. Timely reviews are conducted if organizational goals require modification, or if focus areas need to be changed.
Goals are set based on the organization's business plan and are cascaded down from superiors. Specifically, supervisors clarify and explain their organization's business plan and their own personal goals, whereupon employees set their own goals based on them. In the case of managers, their specific job descriptions are also considered.
Supervisors conduct goal alignment discussions with employees in goal-setting interviews, and upon reaching agreement, approve the goals for the fiscal year.

Appropriate Evaluation and Evaluator Training

Evaluations are determined in three stages: the primary evaluation, in which the superior (e.g., the section manager in charge) serves as the primary evaluator to determine the degree to which the employee achieved their work and demonstrated behaviors; the secondary evaluation, in which the general manager or other manager in charge serves as the secondary evaluator to confirm that the evaluation is appropriate in terms of actual performance and behaviors; and the evaluation finalization, in which the head of the organization confirms and provides approval regarding whether the results for all employees in the organization are consistent with the degree of achievement of the organization as a whole.

In this way, we work to prevent evaluation errors resulting from subjectivity or arbitrariness on the part of evaluators.

We provide employees in evaluator positions with evaluator training (e-learning) and new manager training as well as our Human Resources Evaluation Manual as part of our efforts to further improve the fairness of evaluations and employee satisfaction.

Employees being evaluated are trained on how to undergo evaluation and set targets, and receive a handbook explaining the evaluation and target-setting process, access to online educational tools to promote understanding of the HR and pay management systems, and a collection of high-performance model examples.

Regular Personal Interviews with Superiors and Human Resources Managers

NTT Group employees meet regularly with their superiors and human resource managers for personal interviews to ensure that they share the same perception as their superiors regarding performance targets and the processes required to achieve them, to share thoughts on areas that can be improved, and to discuss career paths and personal growth.

Individual meetings with supervisors consist of one-on-one meetings held as part of daily process management as well as "goal-setting meetings," "mid-year meetings," and "review interviews." All serve as opportunities to check daily work progress and share and discuss work-related issues.

The goal-setting meetings are held to discuss goals for the current fiscal year and provide necessary advice.

The mid-year meetings are for examining the results of the fiscal year's first half and the degree of goal achievement and for discussing issues to be addressed in the second half.

And the review interviews are an opportunity for supervisors and their subordinates to review results, performance, and the processes for achieving targets, and for supervisors to provide advice and motivation for further improvements and growth.

The implementation of these interviews is managed so they are held without fail, except when vacations or leave prevent them from being held in the allotted time.

Multifaceted Evaluation

In each Group company, as part of management training, a 360-degree multifaceted evaluation is implemented for managers, involving the individual, their superiors, peers, and team members.
In this evaluation system, a multifaceted assessment is conducted of key managerial qualities such as visioning, coaching, and leadership, and the results are communicated to the individual. In addition to quantitative scores, qualitative feedback is required that identifies strengths to enhance and weaknesses to improve. This approach helps managers to recognize the discrepancy between their own self-evaluation and external evaluations, encourages them to be aware of the attitudes and behavior expected of them, and promotes improvements in their awareness and behavior.

Evaluation of the Organizations

At the NTT Group, we have set employee engagement as a key indicator for the sustainability KPIs in order to improve engagement across the company. Efforts are made within each organizational unit to elevate employee engagement (measured by the proportion of positive responses) compared to a base year at key companies.
Moreover, to ensure strong organizational commitment to employee engagement, we have incorporated it as an indicator for executive compensation, and also set it as a criterion for the performance bonuses of all management staff.

In-house recruitment

We have introduced a mechanism that supports personnel transfers for those who wish to take on challenges called the "NTT Group Job Board," which facilitates constant and timely application opportunities.

Since its launch in July 1, 2023, there have been approximately 1,000 applications in one year. This is approximately six times the number of applications for the previous recruitment program that was in place until the last fiscal year.

Skill Mapping and Encouraging and Supporting Acquisition of Qualifications

Each Group company sets up a unique program of skill mapping based on the characteristics of their respective business operations and conducts human resources training according to those categories.
Companies measure the level of each employee according to the mapping, identify the number of employees who are qualified for each level, and measure the status of implementation. Specifically, the process is operated as follows:
(1) Designate areas of expertise according to the expert skills required by each operation;
(2) Define and certify levels according to the skill set for each area of expertise; and
(3) Develop a PDCA cycle based on the employee's own career plan, supported by supervisors and the organization.
The NTT Group also encourages employees to acquire qualifications related to their respective duties, including major qualifications that are in broad demand in the ICT industry such as Professional Engineer, Information Technology Engineer and Certified Information Systems Security Technology Professional qualifications, and we intend to boost the number of qualified employees.

Improving Human Resource Management and Payment Systems

The NTT Group implements policies aimed at enabling each and every employee to make the most of their abilities as members of Team NTT and to grow steadily as competent professionals and take the initiative in developing their careers.

We consider it vital to have each and every employee further increase their area of specialization, acquire skills and create added value in a broad range of fields in order to better reform business, expand into new business areas, and supply and generate new value in various areas. A new compensation system will be introduced from 2023 that determines compensation based on the level of acquired "specialization" instead of the number of years employed, age, or years in the position, to help employees achieve their career vision while maintaining the motivation to acquire a higher level of specialization.